Walgreens: Procrastination pays off!

I went to Walgreens today, hoping to have a better visit than last week's, when I paid in the wrong order and ended up paying a lot out of pocket.  And because of that, I had $17 in Register Rewards that were expiring today, so I had to spend them or lose them. 

So I looked through this week's deals.  One of the deals required coupons from the 10/10 Smartsource insert.  Now, usually, I only keep four months' worth of insert coupons in my coupon file, so normally I would have already thrown out the October coupons.  (When I have time, I search through the coupon database for each week's coupons -- I search on "10-10 SS" for the 10/10 Smartsource, for instance -- and cut out the ones that haven't expired and throw away the rest.)

But, I hadn't even had time to throw out the old coupons, much less look for the unexpired ones.  So I was easily able to find the coupons I needed for the deal.  Procrastination pays off!

Here's what I got:

Transaction #1:
1 MiraLAX @ $19.99, receive $3 RR
Use $3 MiraLAX printable coupon
Out of pocket cost: $16.99

The pediatrician had prescribed this over-the-counter medicine for one of my children.  Last year, I would have used my Flexible Savings Account debit card to pay for this item.  With the changes based on the new health care bill, you cannot use a Flexible Savings Account card to pay for over-the-counter medications at the store.  However, if you have a prescription from a doctor, you can request to be reimbursed by your plan after the fact.  This is what I plan on doing, so I am not counting this expense toward my weekly expenditures or toward the Drugstore Bootstrap Challenge.  However, I will count receiving the $3 Register Rewards toward the challenge.

Transaction #2:
2 Crest Pro-Health toothpaste @ $3.50, receive $2 RR
Use 2 $1/1 Crest toothpaste coupons from the 1/16 P&G insert
= $5 out of pocket

2 Reach Total Care toothbrushes @ $2.99, receive $2 RR
Use 1 B1G1 Reach Total Care toothbrushes coupon from the 10/10 Smartsource insert
(this rang up as a $3.50 coupon, not $2.99)
= $2.48 out of pocket

1 Lysol Healthy Touch No-Touch Hand Soap system @ $11.99, receive $7 RR
Use $3 off printable coupon
= $8.99 out of pocket

3 Hallmark cards @ 99¢ each (I needed birthday and Valentine's Day cards, so I used this as my extra items so that I wouldn't have more coupons than items)
= $2.97 out of pocket

Total product cost = $19.44
RRs used: $18 ($17 from two weeks ago, and $1 from last week)
Total before tax: $1.44
Tax: $1.68
Total cash spent: $3.12
Total RRs received: $11